“Listen to me, you do not know this guy. If you think this is going to be allowed, you’re dead wrong. This is not a real marriage. We’ll be getting it annulled, and you have no say in it.”
After an explosive premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival in the south of France, where this movie won the prestigious grand prize of the Palme d’Or, “Anora” immediately propelled itself to the forefront of awards contention. Despite its sensitive subject matter of sex work and prostitution, the film has been heralded as an Oscar frontrunner, including for Best Picture.
The plot follows a young Russian-American woman named Anora “Ani” Mikheeva (played by Mikey Madison, who previously starred as a member of the Manson family in 2019’s “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood”) who works as a stripper and prostitute in Brooklyn to make ends meet. She manages to start an ongoing professional relationship with Ivan “Vanya” Zakharov (played by Mark Eydelshteyn), the playboy son of a wealthy Russian Oligarch. He hires her to be “exclusive” with him and pose as his girlfriend for a New Year’s Eve party at his private mansion. They hit it off (in more ways than one…) and grow quite close. For Vanya to avoid returning to Russia, he proposes a Green Card marriage to Ani, which she accepts to keep using his money and receive a four carat diamond ring in return. They quickly have a shotgun wedding in Las Vegas and live happily ever afte-
Upon learning of this elopement, Vanya’s godfather, an Armenian Orthodox priest named Toros (played by Karren Karagulian, a frequent Sean Baker collaborator), is ordered to annul the marriage to prevent the news from further damaging the Zakharov family’s holdings. He hires Garnick (played by Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor (played by Yura Borisov) to assist him, and they corner Ani, but Vanya manages to escape.
The second act then turns into a twisted version of a screwball comedy, where Ani banters with her captors over the location of her husband, and they drive around frantically retracing his steps so they can drag him before a court of law and bring him back to Russia. The dynamics between the disparate characters had me laughing out loud several times, but the sheer quality of this act made the final third of the film fall a little flat in comparison.
The writer-director, Baker, has previously made a name for himself by making films focused on the plight of marginalized individuals, particularly sex workers. His most famous film, 2017’s “The Florida Project,” actually earned Willem Dafoe an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Now, with “Anora,” he stands a great chance of earning a few Oscars for himself, especially in Best Original Screenplay. While I am not as confident in his chances of being Best Director, there is a very real possibility that he will still be able to pull off a victory come March.
Despite Mikey Madison’s powerhouse performance, my favorite character was Karren Karagulian’s Toros. His role as the only straight man in a world of eccentric and depraved characters had me and the entire theater laughing uncontrollably.
In terms of acting prospects, Mikey Madison is almost a shoo-in for the Academy Award for Best Actress, and I expect her to rightfully sweep the awards season. Yura Borisov also has a decent shot to get into the Oscars for Best Supporting Actor, as his character becomes the real standout of the third act and the stunning final scene.
One warning that I would give about the movie is that if you are uncomfortable with prolonged amounts of graphic nudity and squeamish about sex in films, then you might be best putting this one off for a while. This is very much a film that pulls no punches and does its best to accurately depict the sex industry with as little stigma as possible. While the picture may not be for everyone, I would still highly recommend it if you are willing to give it a try.
“Anora” will knock your socks off, and a whole lot more as well…” My final rating for the film is a saucy 9/10.